[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Lovely site, Melanie. Your costumes are all wonderful. [Hey...why skip the
18th century?]
:) I have one 18th-c that I made in high school, so it's not quite up
to par with the rest of what's up there. I need to make a new one for
teaching costume history, but other things are higher priority right now.
Your ruff instructions are great too. I especially like your use of items
just about anybody can get a hold of! Have you seen Jean Honnisette's ruff
instructions? She "starches"
and does the 8's BEFORE gathering to the neck band. But of course in the
period, this seems unlikely. It makes more sense to me to start with a gathered
ruffle and then manipulate it.
Me too. I hadn't looked at Hunnisett for ruffs because she focuses on
theatrical applications. I've just pulled her out, and she gives
several good versions for the stage. It's true that most theatres can't
do all the restarching and setting that I do on mine.
She shows several that are box-pleated into the band instead of
gathered, and I did actually pleat one of my early ones thinking that
that would make it easier to figure out where the figure-eights would
go. It just makes it much harder to starch! The gathers (or really
really tiny cartridge pleats) are really necessary so that the fullness
can spring almost immediately from tightly gathered into the neckband to
spread wide into the figure-eights. These gathers and the "springing"
action are quite visible in some portraits from the second half of the 16th.
The first ruff I did was theatrical-style, made with plastic horsehair
braid and cartridge-pleated to a neckband. Then I made a doublet with a
standing collar and found that they didn't get along because the length
of my neck was taken up with the ruff band.
The way I do my ruffs now is not only more accurate, it works better.
With all of the ruff springing from the top of the band, it sits nicely
behind a standing collar, and since I dry them upside-down after
starching, they cradle the face like those in the portraits rather than
just sitting out flat.
How did you determine how much yardage to use in the ruff?
I use math! I make some sample figure-eights of the size I want them to
be, and then see how much flat fabric it takes to make, say, a
three-inch-long section of figure-eights. Then I decide how wide the
ruff will be from neck edge to hem edge and work from my neck
circumference to find the ruff circumference. If the ruff is, for
example, 36" around, and it takes 12" of flat fabric to make a 3"
section of figure-eights, I'll need 144" of fabric.
More would make bigger 8's, no? Would you need a goffering iron with a
larger diameter?
Yes. I have two of them. The trick is figuring out just how big the 8s
should be each time you starch the things. If you make them too tall,
there will be spaces between them because there won't be enough of them
to make it all the way around.
Why did you attach the 2nd ruff to the neck of the shirt? If I were you, I
take the ruff and neckband off the shirt, put a new band on the shirt and just
baste them together to wear. That way washing is easier, fixing the ruff is
easier, and you can wear the ruff elsewhere...and the shirt w/out a ruff.
True. It was an experiment, and we do know that early ones were
attached. But ones of that size, probably not, and I wouldn't do it
again. It makes it much harder to restarch.
Cheers,
Melanie
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